


These Days

by ballyboley



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 1990s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Homelessness, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, No Apocalypse (Umbrella Academy), Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 13:10:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19426657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballyboley/pseuds/ballyboley
Summary: An AU where there's no apocalypse, but Reginald Hargreeves still dies. Without imminent disaster to speed things along, Klaus and his (mostly) estranged siblings have to figure themselves out the hard way.





	These Days

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes before we get started. First, I don't have anything resembling a posting schedule. This was written for fun, with relatively little planning, as a way to de-stress. I wanted to play with a voice, and explore how the Hargreeves family might have handled their father's death without imminent doom to bring them all together. Yes, that means some of your favorites might never appear. Second, the story is set in 1997. I know the show says it's 2019, but I don't care. The late 90s make more sense considering the level of technology. (For the purpose of this story, I'm assuming this means they were born in 1969. No, the math probably doesn't align with the show exactly.)
> 
> ALSO, General Klaus warnings apply. That includes or MAY include drug addiction (and an important caveat here that, as it's from his POV, many of the descriptions of said drug use, especially in earlier chapters, are going to be in a positive light), homelessness, prostitution, addiction recovery, and gory ghosts. Also also, please take all of my descriptions of drug use with a hefty grain of salt.
> 
> The title of the story is taken from a quote from Princess Mononoke, which you can read below.

_“These days, there are angry ghosts all around us. Dead from wars, sickness, starvation. And nobody cares. So you say you’re under a curse? Well, so what? So’s the whole damned world.” - Hayao Miyazaki_

#

Dear old Dad was a soggy lump of ash in the backyard, slowly being rinsed away by the evening storm, and good riddance to him. Maybe in the spring, his bits would come back as a narcissus flower—a daffodil, you plebian—and then maybe his miserable ghost would lighten up a bit and appreciate the irony. 

_Get it, Ben,_ Klaus did not say, _because he was a self-absorbed prick?_

They’d had the service outside under the big old tree. It took all of seven minutes. Two of which were taken up by Pogo’s dubious sentimentality—he couldn’t possibly mean it, could he?—three by Luther forcing the rest of them to give a shit, the rest by a dick measuring contest, and not even the fun kind. Jesus, what a welcome home. He’d rather go back to dumpster diving than spend even a minute more than absolutely necessary with his asshole siblings in this creepy, overbearing house.

Really, he wouldn’t have come at all, but Ben wanted to see his remaining family again, even if that seeing was one-sided. Because of the whole, you know, _dead_ thing. ( _You wanted to see them, too,_ thought Klaus, _don’t lie to yourself_. But Klaus was adept in ignoring thoughts like that.)

Anyway, that was before. Now, Klaus was lying in his back on his childhood bed, scuffed up discman laying on his chest, headphones crammed into his ears, watching the Christmas lights he’d strung up blink in circles around the bedroom. Ben was lying beside him, curled up close enough that he could hear the music, too. It was one of Ben’s particular favorites—a Mad Season CD they’d found discarded on the sidewalk, under the bench at one of those covered bus stops when he’d had to slum it for a while it six months ago. 

It wasn’t quite enough to drown out the wailing of the undead—god this house was even worse than he remembered—but it gave it a bit of ambiance until the oxy kicked in and he didn’t give a shit anymore.

Klaus sniffed, absently itching at his nose. Any second now.

So far tonight he had a few familiar faces looming over him. Among them: the shrimpy little kid, whose wrists got crushed in one of the machines back when this place was still a factory and child labor was a thing. The kid’s father, noose still dangling his broken neck, eyeballs protruding grotesquely from his skull. The stringy-haired lady with the caved-in ribs and the bloody teeth. The skinny one with the bullet holes was the easiest to bear, visually speaking. Ben had actually looked that one up during a study session once when they were young. Apparently the guy had tried to steal the cash box from the factory manager’s office and faced the firing squad for his trouble. What did the guy think Klaus could to do about that? Sorry, sweetheart, but you were a fucking terrible thief. Accept it and move on.

When Klaus was a kid, he’d thought all homes were like this, full of violent, desperate ghosts whose screams even pierced your nightmares. It wasn’t until he was twenty two and he talked some corporate finance douchebag into taking him home for the night that he discovered the truth—that lots of homes were quiet and clean, and that the people who lived in them lived quiet, clean lives, haunted only by their own selves.

(Klaus and the corporate douchebag had awkward, vanilla sex on top of a beige bedspread. A wooden plaque of blue-eyed Jesus, hanging above the headboard, stared down at them the whole time. The guy kept glancing at the door with each thrust, like he expected somebody to walk in. Nobody ever did, but the next day, the guy couldn’t look him in the eye without his shoulders curling in shame. It was so horrendously awkward that Klaus didn’t even steal anything. He actually had to crush the impulse to say something reassuring. So he just took the hundred bucks he was owed and booked it the fuck out of there as fast as possible.)

Suddenly, Ben’s voice cut through the music and the wailing and Klaus’s wandering thoughts. “Hey. Vanya’s here.”

Klaus started. “What?” He looked to the right, toward the door, willing his eyes to ignore the spiritual and focus on the physical. A small, slouching shape lingered on the threshold. “Oh. Hello, Vanya.”

“Um,” she said. “Hey. Are you busy?”

Klaus blinked, and then smirked. A pleasant rush of _all right_ flooded his system— _ah_ , he thought, _there it is._ “Why?” he said, perking up a bit. “If you’re asking on behalf of Number One, the answer is yes, terribly so. I’ll be busy all night, perhaps even tomorrow.”

Vanya seemed to take this as encouragement, because after a moment, her shoulders relaxed and she smiled a bit, as much as she ever did. The barest tilt of her lips. “Busy with what?” She took a careful step into the room, and then another and another, until she was standing right square in the middle of Bullet Guy, and suddenly Klaus couldn’t look directly at her without his eyes wigging out, like a 3D movie without the stupid glasses.

Klaus averted his eyes, pursed his lips, furrowing his brow tragically, and raised one hand to his chest. “Why, I’m in mourning,” he said in a dramatic sing-song. “My dearest father has given up the ghost. I don’t know how I’ll go on.”

Vanya laughed, just a little, at that, and Klaus felt a twinge of—of something. Pride, maybe, that he’d managed to cheer her up a bit. Or shame, like he wasn’t sure she deserved it after her little stunt. She had, after all, hotwired the family trauma and taken it for a joyride up the bestseller list. But then again, he supposed, glass houses. He wasn’t known for his good decisions. Nobody wanted him around, either.

“Did you eat dinner?” Vanya said. She had a formless sweater on—a different one than she’d been wearing during the funeral. It was baggy enough to ball her hands up in the sleeves, which she did. “I mean,” she said, “I know you skipped, because I did too. But do you want to?”

As a child, dinner in the Hargreeves household had meant rigid silence, filled only by the shriek of cutlery against porcelain and the droning of Dad’s creepy philosophy tracts droning from the record player. He couldn’t sit at that table without the weight of it all pressing on him. It must have shown on his face, because Vanya blurted, “Not here. Somewhere else.”

Klaus blinked.

“I’ll pay,” she insisted. “I just want company, and, well.”

Her little foray into literary fame had left everyone else in the house feeling a little hostile. Klaus wasn’t thrilled about it himself, but he had to admit, he could relate.

Beside him, Ben sat up and leaned close to Klaus’s ear. “Free meal,” he said. “You should eat while you can.”

Klaus glanced reflexively at Ben’s face, response already springing to his tongue—but no, Vanya was still here, if he was too obvious, she’d remember he was too much trouble and rescind the invitation. “Why not,” he said to both of them. “I could eat.”

Vanya smiled, looking relieved.

He stood up, stretching his limbs out like a star, and relished how all his nerve endings tingled. God, this shit was worth every penny. Stringy Haired Lady slavered at his shoulder, but he just flashed her a grin, because she was already starting to thin out at the edges. By the time he’d stepped back into his boots and followed Vanya out into the dark hall, the spirit was already gone.

#

The rain had faded off to a frigid, penetrating mist that cut straight through Klaus’s jacket. This was relevant, because as neither he nor Vanya could drive, they had to walk two blocks to get to the nearest diner. He remembered sleeping rough in weather like this. He’d done it often enough over the years. It sucked a lot, and more often than not, he woke up ill as a result.

Klaus would never be thankful for his childhood bedroom or anything, but the fact that he had someplace dry and warm to sleep tonight was reassuring. Admittedly, it helped that he was seeing the situation through oxy colored glasses, so everything pleasantly rose-tinted.

In theory, he did have a place across town, but Klaus was pretty sure that arrangement had gone the way of the dodo at some point within the last week or so. For the past two months, he had been renting a room in this ramshackle old rowhome shared by six others, plus a rotating cast of vagabonds passing through. It was right under the highway overpass, so it was loud pretty much all the time, and he wasn’t sure if he was strictly _renting_ or just paying to squat like a dumbass, and he didn’t trust any of the other tenant enough to like, leave his stash there or anything, but it was cheap, with four walls and a physical address and didn’t constantly remind him of seventeen years of trauma, so overall, Klaus had chalked that one up as a win.

Alas, he’d come home for daddy dearest’s funeral on the heels of a truly legendary bender, one so strong that it had even made Ben all see-through. Who knew how long he’d been out of touch. By now, his, ah, roommates had probably given away his mattress and divided up all the stuff he left behind. Including, tragically, his favorite mesh tunic.

Oh well. This was why he’d kept squirreling away extra stuff at the mansion over the years, even though he hated every second he had to be there. Extra tee shirts, winter coats, spare boots, pills, cash, you name it, he’d hidden it somewhere in the house. In case of emergency, break (bedroom window) glass. It was a good system. He refused to sleep there if he could help it, but the place made a serviceable storage locker.

The hardest part was just avoiding Luther and Pogo when he came by, lest he be subjected to the usual: _your father would be ashamed. You’re wasting your potential. Stop attention-seeking and grow up, blah blah blah._ Lately, it hadn’t even been that, just long, pregnant stared and heavy, judgment filled sighs.

But that wouldn’t be a problem for long. He just had to put up with that special Hargreeves blend of self-aggrandizement for a few more days. Specifically, until the reading of the old man’s will, and then he could vanish into the night, flush with cash and with as many priceless, pawnable artifacts as he could carry. Then he could find a new place. Maybe even buy one. Then nobody could randomly piss-test him and evict him for getting high, or give his mattress away to another random junkie whenever he ODed.

The diner Vanya picked gleamed chrome under the street lights when they arrived. Inside were two elderly waitresses, a young busboy, and three customers (two grizzly-bearded men and an old woman). If there were ghosts there other than Ben, Klaus had no way to know. No wailing, no accusations, no moaning, no ghastly injuries. Just the dull chatter of boring, average diner patrons on a dark evening.

In other words, blissful silence.

Klaus cast himself into the nearest booth, splaying his legs out across the seat, crossed merrily at the ankle, and cocked a smile at Vanya. Ben stood at the end of the table, arms crossed, fixing Klaus with a glare. “Come on,” said Ben. “Really? I know you can see me.”

“Ugh, _fi-_ nuh,” he drew out the word childishly, and then swung his feet down to the floor to sit like a boring person.

Across the table, Vanya raised her eyebrows at him, but picked up her menu and said nothing.

“She looks like Allison when she does that,” said Ben.

“I know, right?”

“Who—uh, who are you talking to?” Vanya asked without looking him in the eye, fingers twiddling with the clear lamination film at the edge of the menu.

“Ah.” Klaus glanced over at Ben, whose jaw was tight as he watched them both, and abruptly decided to take the risk. “Benny-boy here says you look like Allison when you make that face.” He pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows in imitation. “You know. The I-wanna-ask-but-I-know-it’s-not-worth-it expression.”

Vanya didn’t respond at first. Her fingers tightened around the menu. She looked Klaus pointedly in the eye—checking his pupils, probably—and then looked at the empty seat beside him. A question hung unstated in the air for a moment. Then, something shifted, and Vanya settled into he first real smile he’d seen on her face in years. She averted her eyes, burying herself in the menu again, but Klaus caught the little glances she kept throwing in Ben’s direction.

It lit something warm in Klaus’s breast. Like—something other than the drugs. It felt like a secret had sprung up between them, like all those late nights after curfew, before the missions had started, when he’d snuck into Ben’s room to read together by flashlight.

Maybe he really didn’t care about her stupid book, or what she’d inevitably say about him in the sequel.

“Hey,” said Klaus, slapping his palm down on the table. “You know what a beautiful night like tonight needs?”

“I don’t know. What?”

Klaus let a jack-o-lantern grin split his face and leaned towards her. “Giant fucking milkshakes.”

“Dessert before dinner,” said Vanya, considering. Then she leaned back in her seat, shoulders finally falling away from her ears. It felt like an accomplishment. “Dad’s worst nightmare. Sounds perfect.”

#

By the time they got home, Klaus was still riding high on a wave of chemical contentment. So when the front door swung open, the rush of warm air from inside the house, for once, did not feel so oppressive. Instead, it enveloped him like an old friend.

He and Vanya had been chatting loudly—a bitch session, one of his favorite activities. His sister was on a roll. She’d spent the last block ranting about her first chair, and Klaus, a professional, had made the appropriate aghast sound effects at all the right places.

So he didn’t think much of it when, as they were kicking off their wet shoes in the foyer, Luther, Allison, Diego and Pogo all filed out of Dad’s old cigar room.

Allison stopped when caught his eye, and Diego and Luther both paused behind her. “Oh, hey guys,” she said, voice light but pointed. “Vanya and Klaus. I didn’t know you’d gone out together.”

Diego scowled. “Gathering dirt for the sequel, huh, sis?”

“Maybe I’m the one gathering dirt,” said Klaus lightly. “I’ve been thinking of making my own foray into the written word. What do you think?”

“Guys,” said Luther without bite. “Knock it off.”

“Just the diner,” said Vanya, sounding unsure. “Why? Did we miss something?”

Behind Allison, Diego and Luther exchanged a glance. Another time, maybe, he’d have called them on it, but right now Klaus couldn’t care less.

“Nope!” said Allison. “Don’t worry about it. It’s late. We’ll fill you in tomorrow when we meet about the estate.”

Vanya was frowning, like something about that bothered her. But Klaus resolved to worry about that later. He wasn’t about to waste the rest of his high on family drama.

He clapped her on the shoulder. “Well, Vanya dear, it’s been fun. But I’m going to go take full advantage of that beautiful soaker tub upstairs and sleep like the dead.” Ha. The dead. He waved at them all. “Toodles!”

With that, he marched upstairs. Klaus only had one more night stuck in this hellhole. Then, flush with Daddy’s cash, he and Ben could move on to bigger and better things.


End file.
